List of American military installations

This is a list of military installations owned or used by the United States Armed Forces both in the United States and around the world. This list details only current or recently closed facilities; some defunct facilities are found at Category:Former military installations of the United States.

A military installation is the basic administrative unit into which the U.S. Department of Defense groups its infrastructure, and is statutorily defined as any “base, camp, post, station, yard, center, or other activity under the jurisdiction … [or] operational control of the Secretary of a military department or the Secretary of Defense.”^[1] An installation or group of installations may, in turn, serve as a base, which DOD defines as “a locality from which operations are projected or supported.”^[2]

The U.S. military maintains hundreds of installations, both inside the United States and overseas (with at least 128 military bases located outside of its national territory as of July 2024).^[2] According to the U.S. Army, Camp Humphreys in South Korea is the largest overseas base in terms of area.^[3] Most of foreign military installations are located in NATO countries, Middle East countries, South Korea and Japan.

U.S. officials have been accused of collaborating with oppressive regimes and anti-democratic governments to secure their military bases, from Central America to the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.^[4] The Democracy Index classifies many of the forty-five current non-democratic U.S. base hosts as fully "authoritarian governments".^[4] Military bases in non-democratic states were often rationalized during the Cold War by the U.S. as a necessary if undesirable condition in defending against the communist threat posed by the Soviet Union. Few of these bases have been abandoned since the end of the Cold War.^[5]

Several rounds of closures and mergers have occurred since the end of World War II, a procedure most recently known as Base Realignment and Closure. Anti-racist agitation in the early 2020s led to calls for changing bases to remove the names of Confederate figures who fought against the Union during the American Civil War.^[6] The Naming Commission was created by the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021,^[7] and renaming began in December 2022.^[8]

Joint bases

Domestic joint bases

The Pentagon – located in Arlington County, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C.
Joint Base Elmendorf–Richardson – located 12 kilometers (8 miles) north of Anchorage, Alaska
Joint Base Pearl Harbor–Hickam – located 11 kilometers (7 miles) northwest of Honolulu, Hawaii
Joint Base McGuire–Dix–Lakehurst – located 29 kilometers (18 miles) south of Trenton, New Jersey
Joint Base Charleston – located 8 kilometers (5 miles) east of North Charleston, South Carolina
Joint Base San Antonio – located 8 kilometers (5 miles) north of San Antonio, Texas
Joint Base Langley-Eustis – located 12 kilometers (8 miles) east of Newport News, Virginia
Joint Region Marianas – combines Naval Base Guam, Andersen Air Force Base and Marine Corps Base Camp Blaz
Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall – located 1 kilometer (1 mile) northwest of Arlington County, Virginia
Joint Expeditionary Base–Little Creek – located 20 kilometers (13 miles) northwest of Virginia Beach
Joint Base Lewis-McChord – located 17 kilometers (11 miles) southwest of Tacoma, Washington
Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling – located in Southeast Washington, D.C.
Joint Base Andrews – located 22 kilometers (14 miles) south of Washington, D.C.

Foreign joint bases

War Reserve Stocks are located in many foreign states.

Australia joint bases

Pine Gap – Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap (JDFPG), near Alice Springs, Northern Territory.
Naval Communication Station Harold E. Holt – located on the northwest coast of Australia, 6 kilometres (4 mi) north of the town of Exmouth, Western Australia.
Robertson Barracks – located in Darwin, Northern Territory.
Australian Defence Satellite Communications Station – located near Kojarena 30 km east of Geraldton, Western Australia.
Other U.S. bases in Australia are present and this list does not include ADF bases with U.S. access. The U.S. military has access to many ADF training areas, northern Australian RAAF airfields, port facilities in Darwin, Fremantle, Stirling naval base in Perth, and the airfield on the Cocos Islands in the Indian Ocean.^[9]^[10]^[11]^[12]^[13]

Iraq joint bases

There are approximately 2,500 U.S. service members in Iraq,^[14] spread across several facilities in Iraq and other bases in Iraqi Kurdistan,^[15] being used as training bases for Iraqi and Kurdish forces^[16] as well as launching operations against targets in Syria.^[17]

Syria joint bases

Landing zone at Al-Tanf, Syria

There were approximately 1,500–2,000 U.S. forces in Syria, spread across 12 different facilities, being used as training bases for Kurdish rebels.^[19]^[20] These soldiers withdrew from Syria to western Iraq in October 2019.^[21] Meanwhile, the New York Times reported that the Pentagon was planning to "leave 150 Special Operations forces at a base called al-Tanf", where the United States is training Free Syrian Army rebels.^[22] In addition, 200 U.S. soldiers would remain in eastern Syria near the oil fields, to prevent the Islamic State, Syrian government and Russian forces from advancing in the region.^[23]

According to the Head of the Syrian Arab Republic delegation to Astana talks the U.S. presence in Syria is "illegal" and "without the consent of (the) government".^[24]

United States Army

This is a list of links for U.S. Army forts and installations, organized by U.S. state or territory within the U.S. and by country if overseas. For consistency, major Army National Guard (ARNG) training facilities are included but armory locations are not.^[25]